Arun Vishwanath

Off the Hook! Who Gets Phished and Why

A study by Arun Vishwanath and colleagues points out why we're
susceptible to phishing scams and how to be avoid being snared.

“Individuals need to be extra careful when utilizing a single email account to respond to all their emails. An effective strategy is to use different email accounts for different purposes.”

Arun Vishwanath

Associate Professor of Communication

Communication researchers at four major universities have found
that if you receive a lot of email, habitually respond to a good
portion of it, maintain a lot of online relationships and conduct a
large number of transactions online, you are more susceptible to
email phishing expeditions than those who limit their online
activity.

The study, "Why Do People Get Phished?" forthcoming in the
journal, "Decision Support Systems and Electronic Commerce," uses
an integrated information processing model to test individual
differences in vulnerability to phishing.

The study is particularly pertinent, given the rash of phishing
expeditions that have become public of late, the most recent
involving the online marketing firm Epsilon, whose database was
breached last week by hackers, potentially affecting millions of
banking and retail customers.

The authors are Arun "Vish" Vishwanath, PhD, associate professor
in the UB Department of Communication, College of Arts and
Sciences, and an expert in consumer behavior, specifically the
diffusion and acceptance of information technology; H. Raghav Rao,
PhD, SUNY Distinguished Service Professor in the UB Department of
Management Science and Systems, School of Management, who conducts
research on decision support systems, e-business, emergency
response management systems and information assurance; Tejaswini
Herath, PhD, Brock University (Ont., CA); Rui Chen, PhD, Ball State
University, and Jingguo Wang, PhD, University of Texas, Arlington.
Herath, Chen and Wang all earned degrees from UB.

A study of Facebook behavior by University at Buffalo researcher
Michael Stefanone and colleagues found that women who base their
self worth on appearance are more likely to share photos on the
social networking site.